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Pharmaceutical waste has become an urgent public health and environmental protection issue in recent years, leading to a variety of sometimes-conflicting federal and state legislation and regulations that health care entities must take seriously.

The federal government is proposing changes to the pharmacy benefit of marketplace plans in 2016 that (among other things) would increase the power of P&T committees, revise minimum “drug count” standards, and tighten conflict-of-interest rules.

A woman received intravenous (IV) acetaminophen every six hours (16 doses) for pain control. Tests showed high levels of markers for liver damage, but levels fell after the drug was stopped—raising the possibility of hepatotoxicity linked to IV acetaminophen.

In a study in Michigan psychiatric hospitals, patients taking both valproic acid (VPA) and antipsychotics were slightly heavier than patients taking antipsychotics alone, but VPA did not appear to be associated with significant metabolic effects.

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About P&T®

Editor-in-Chief

David Nash, M.D, M.B.A., Editor in Chief

David B. Nash, MD, MBA, editor-in-chief of P&T, is Dean of the Jefferson School of Population Health, Philadelphia. From 1996 to 2003, he served as the first Associate Dean for Health Policy at Jefferson Medical College. In 2004, he was named Co-director of the Master’s Program in Public Health at Jefferson.